Organizations increasingly depend on digitally-stored data in the course of business. For this reason, many organizations may employ a backup system, such as a continuous data protection appliance, to protect their data.
In a common configuration, a continuous data protection appliance continuously backs up data from a host system. The continuous data protection appliance may need access to the host data from the same storage system which the host uses to store its data. Furthermore, the host system and the continuous data protection appliance may each connect to the storage system via one of multiple available input/output paths. If one path fails between the storage system and another system (either the host system or the continuous data protection appliance), the system may use another available input/output path.
Unfortunately, if the storage system is an active-passive array, switching paths after path failure may lead to a path conflict and may, consequently, degrade and/or disrupt application I/O from the host system while the continuous data protection system backs up or restores host data. Since application I/O performance may take priority over continuous data protection I/O performance, any interference with application I/O on account of a continuous data protection system may be unacceptable. Accordingly, the instant disclosure addresses a need for systems and methods that handle path failures to active-passive storage arrays without creating path conflicts.